Increase Productivity Through Education
By Sandra K. Williams © 1997. All rights reserved.
In this era of doing more with less, many of us manage employees who are doing jobs they’ve never done before and haven’t been trained in. The employees who might have trained them or at least shown them how it used to be done have been laid off or handshaked out. And some of them are doing jobs that didn’t even exist five years ago.
As modern managers, we must help our workers — and ourselves — develop in areas outside the particular skills needed to perform daily business tasks. Our ability to transform ourselves and enable our work force to change as industry changes will determine our future livelihood. This ability to roll with the changes depends as much on mental attitude as on job skills. While keeping our knowledge, skills, and abilities current, we have to prepare for adapting to unexpected challenges and welcoming unforeseen opportunities.
The companies we own and manage will benefit from our adaptability in their ability to change as the market changes. “In a world where success depends on brainpower and curiosity, the self-managed growth of the individual becomes paramount, and the wise corporation wittingly turns itself into a tool for fostering individuals’ growth,” writes Tom Peters in The Pursuit of WOW!.
How do we grow and keep up with this ever-changing world? Some of us pursue advanced educational degrees and encourage our employees to continue their education also. The greater understanding of a particular subject and updated knowledge gained in pursuing a degree can give you the confidence to succeed as well as improving the performance of both you and your employees.
Recognizing our need to continually update skills and knowledge, universities have expanded their traditional full-time day student curricula to include evening programs tailored to working professionals. For instance, the University of California at Davis Graduate School of Management has just expanded its three-year-old Working Professional MBA Program. This program offers classes equivalent to the daytime program but accessible for people who have already begun their careers.
In contrast, the University of Phoenix was founded to assist working adults to continue their education. Nearly 20 years ago the university began providing classes at times and in places convenient to full-time employees. It now offers classes both in traditional classrooms and through a computer network.
Not all career fields require a higher degree. In some fields, earning an MBA behind your name might hinder the rapport you need to establish with your customers. If your business is in the growing stages, you might not be able to commit to the time and energy required for a degree program, even one geared to working professionals.
Many of us who already hold advanced degrees or who just don’t think a degree is relevant to our situation continue the search for improvement with seminars. We like focused training that lasts from a few hours to a few days, producing quick results.
Seminars are particularly effective for those of us who already have extensive time commitments yet want to expand our knowledge or brush up on or learn new skills. Seminar attendees can learn a new ability in just a few hours and be able to apply this learning immediately.
Seminars also allow us to focus only on the particular skills or knowledge needed. While a degree program encompasses a range of knowledge or skills deemed necessary for that degree, a seminar usually tackles one subject. And we pick that subject and its complexity.
Seminars can also be one of the benefits we offer our employees. By investing in them, just as we would in new plant equipment, we increase our productivity. Business expert Peter F. Drucker states in Managing for the Future, “Increased productivity needs continuous learning.” For instance, we can send our employees to a seminar where they learn the basics of how to use word processing software or how to automate word processing tasks using mail merges and macro commands. A good seminar can increase office productivity several times over.
We can build an employee education program based on seminars, use seminars to fill gaps in our knowledge, or make seminars part of our continuous personal growth. Continuing lifelong education with seminars demands more planning on our part than completing a pre-designed program, but we have much more control.
We need to exercise that control when selecting seminars from the offerings that stream into our mailboxes. Direct mail pieces advertise seminars on subjects ranging from writing, newsletter production, marketing, digital photo editing, starting a business, running a business, and dealing with negative people to building and maintaining databases, managing computer networks, and using various software packages.
With this deluge of seminars, many of which sound intriguing but may cost more than a day’s wages, deciding which ones deserve our time and money is difficult. While universities are accredited by independent evaluators, most seminars are not. As a small business person or overextended executive, taking time from business or sending an employee to attend a seminar that may turn out to be a time-waster is like taking money from the till to gamble in Reno.
One way to judge the quality of a seminar is the organization producing it. Colorado-based CareerTrack, for example, organizes seminars around the country on a variety of subjects, including time management, customer service, and communication.
Because of CareerTrack’s reputation, self-employment experts Paul and Sarah Edwards worked with CareerTrack to create a seminar based on their book Working from Home. Other reasons for selecting CareerTrack included the company’s quality control as well as the resources it would put into developing the seminar. CareerTrack has a curriculum development staff that designs presentation and seminar content based on comments from seminar attendees and research on what people want to learn.
Locally, the Learning Exchange offers the broadest range of courses from one source. Concentrating on all aspects of life, Learning Exchange seminars vary from “How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You” to “How to Make a Fortune Publishing a Newsletter.” Many of the instructors expand on material presented in their best-selling books; other instructors share knowledge and skills developed over years in their particular craft.
Two Sacramento companies that specialize in computer software training for business are Computer Assistance and Computer Utilization Incorporated. Computer Assistance focuses on workhorse software such as word processing, spreadsheet, and database software, while Computer Utilization also includes computer network classes.
Professional seminars directly applicable to specific career fields are often held by organizations such as the International Association of Business Communicators or American Marketing Association. The Sacramento Valley AMA recently held its fourth annual Marketing Boot Camp. For this day-long event, the planning committee selected speakers known for their marketing success and excellent presentation skills.
If you’re interested in a seminar but have never heard of the speaker, ask for referrals. Susan Dakuzaku, herself a professional speaker, depends on referrals from others who have seen or heard of the speaker if she doesn’t know a presenter’s credentials.
Most of us are reluctant to pay for an unknown product. Knowing this fact and confident of the value of their presentations, accomplished speakers such as “praxiologist” Bern Moses or business coach Ron Sutton not only invite persons interested in a seminar series to attend one session but also give a money-back guarantee that audience members will be satisfied with their investment of time and money.
The investment of money for seminars can range from free to thousands of dollars. Is a more expensive seminar worth more than a free one? Sometimes yes. But don’t judge every seminar by price.
Some organizations include seminars as part of their membership benefits. The River City Small Business Chamber, for instance, holds monthly one-hour seminars that are free to members. Two outstanding speakers featured in this series were authors David Garfinkel, How to Write Letters That Make Your Phone Ring, and Jody Hornor, Power Marketing for Small Business. Either one could easily have charged admission.
The training and self-development needed by members of the knowledge society can be found in many prices and forms. Our responsibility is to manage our personal and business growth by selecting the training we and our employees need to succeed.
Published in The Business Resource